Although many retailers look to the year-end holidays to make an Internet splash, Oriental Trading Company recognized that Halloween —a major sales period for them—represented a time to stand out.
Oriental Trading Company is the largest direct marketer of party supplies, arts and crafts, toys and novelties in the U.S. Their core audience is made up of parents (mostly moms), teachers, businesses, non-profits and crafters.
To break through into the social marketing space with the goal of driving engagement around its brand, Oriental Trading Company turned to T3 to create a fun and engaging online Halloween experience. Working in the lab late one night, the evil geniuses at T3 at last captured the lightning bolt they needed to bring the creation to life. On August 26, the site, Monster Mash-Up, was launched.
The site enables users to create hilarious Halloween dance videos starring themselves and their friends, to the accompaniment of the licensed Halloween golden oldie “Monster Mash.”
Users start by selecting a classic, country or rock theme for their video. Each theme has its own richly detailed sets, hilariously intricate character animations and genre-specific soundtrack. Next, they graft the heads of their friends and loved ones onto the animated monster characters. (Important note: these are not real human heads, only photos they upload from their computers or import via Facebook Connect.) Monster Mash-Up also includes a gallery of character faces users can choose from.
After previewing their videos and making any necessary adjustments, users are ready to inflict their creations upon the world. Monster Mash-Up videos can be shared by e-mailing them to friends and family directly from the site. Users can also post links to their videos in their Facebook or Twitter feeds, or bookmark them on sharing sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.
Keeping in mind the family audience it is intended for, Monster Mash-Up is full of humor and laughs, rather than fear and fright. Everyone in the family can share in the fun, and youngsters find it especially hilarious.
The T3 team created custom illustrations for both the backgrounds and characters, providing Oriental Trading Company an experience unique to their brand. After Effects and other animation techniques were used to bring that experience to life.
T3 commissioned the talented folks at Static West to provide a customized rock version of “Monster Mash”, which featured Oriental Trading Company CEO Sam Taylor himself on background vocals. Additional sound effects and spooky ambient music add greatly to the overall experience.
Aside from driving brand awareness, Oriental Trading Company’s other goals include adding opt-in subscribers to their e-mail marketing efforts, as well boosting sales of Halloween-themed merchandise.
With a tremendous number of unique user videos created in its very first week (before any marketing support), the site has every appearance of becoming, well, a monster success. Taylor says, “The final result has exceeded even my high expectations, and I know that we made the right choice in partnering with T3 for this important project.”
So don’t just sit there like a zombie—do the Monster Mash-Up!
